The 8 Most Haunted Cities in the U.S.

Leaf peeping is one way to see a city in October. Exploring its eerie past and haunted present is another. Unlike a theatrical horror show, however, what you’ll discover here won’t make you scream—at least not right away. Rather, the experiences will creep back into your brain long after you’ve gone home, when you least expect it, like at 3 a.m., keeping you awake all night long. If you’re traveling with your family, be warned: There’s a minimum-age requirement in most of the history-based ghost tours in these popular vacation spots. Read on, if you dare.

3. Honolulu, Hawaii

A mysterious lady in red wanders the hallway and disappears into walls. Glass doors shut and hair dryers start roaring, all on their own. An attendance tracker records a deceased hotel worker clocking in, but never out—with a punch card that had long been canceled. Figures march in the distance and disappear toward Diamond Head, and a sailor boy vanishes as abruptly as he appears. Figments of the imagination after a long hot day and one too many piña coladas? Probably. But, says Robert Sepulveda, tour guide with Oahu Ghost Tours, tourists and locals accept that the island is a mystical place. Up until the 1700s, Waikiki was just a boggy area of land, where common folk lived, worked, and buried their family. (The most fertile grounds, reserved for royalty, were toward the back of the valleys near mountains.) When condos and hotels sprouted up in the last century, long-buried bones, including from temples where human sacrifices took place, were shifted or ignored and built over. Such blatant disrespect naturally angered the spirits, which, says Sepulveda, explains why this tourist hotspot is “very active” from a paranormal perspective.